ABSTRACT
St Ninian s Isle in Shetland is best known for being the find spot of the St Ninian's Isle treasure (Plate 1), a magnificent hoard of 28 pieces of Pictish silverware found in 1958 during excavations on the Isle by Professor Andrew C O'Dell of Aberdeen University. O'Dell had been attracted to the site by the local tradition that a medieval chapel dedicated to St Ninian lay below the sand on the east side of the Isle. O'Dell was to uncover and excavate the chapel in 1955—56, but when his excavations in succeeding summer seasons continued below and to the south of the chapel, he uncovered archaeological remains that spanned the late prehistoric to medieval periods. 1 In 1958 the 'treasure' was found during excavations below the chapel and by 1959, when O'Dell and his team returned to the Isle for the last time in an attempt to 'finish' the excavations and tidy up the site, they had uncovered an ever more complicated suite of archaeological features from below up to 6m of wind-blown sand, on what was clearly a nationally important site. Above the ruins of Iron Age stone structures, paving and middens, short cist burials and cremations, long cists and early incised crosses and cross slabs were excavated. An earlier church 2 building was found below the later medieval chapel, and a collection of early Christian shrine posts were discovered in a secondary position outside the SE corner of the chapel. Iron Age pottery, a bone and antler necklace, animal bone, worked stone and beads were also found in the Iron Age levels. At the end of the summer of 1959, the site was consolidated and turfed over, and arguments continued as to where the treasure should be housed: in Aberdeen, Shetland or Edinburgh (Smith 1973). Meanwhile the archaeological remains on the site received less attention, and compounded by the lack of published information or an excavation archive as we would understand it today, this has remained the case, with academic investigation since concentrating on the nature and art style of the hoard and the circumstances of its deposition (see below). This volume does not intend therefore to discuss the treasure in great depth, but rather the archaeological site that produced such a unique find. It describes the results of a small research project undertaken at Glasgow University between 1999 and 2004 with the aim of revisiting the archaeology at the site through a study of the archive material from the 1950s excavations, and renewed survey and excavation work on the Isle over two summer seasons. It was intended that the project should attempt to redress the balance between the archaeology in and around the chapel on St Ninian s Isle and the spectacular find that was to make it famous.
